God forbid we have a situation in an M-rated video game that makes someone uncomfortable. I really am sick of the moral crusades taking on video games. Perhaps murdering humans offends me. I don't see all that violence being censored!

It was bad enough forcing every character in DA2 to be bisexual (I have NOTHING against LGBTQ people, I just think it's bad characterization), but now content is straight up being cut out of the game because it offends a specific demographic. I don't actually have a problem with the content being cut if it has unintended consequences; I just hate the idea of game developers, especially RPG developers censoring their storylines.

Of course Gaider spins the whole thing for positive PR from the feminism crowd.

I want games to be intellectually, emotionally, and morally challenging--just like books and films. For how long do we have to err on the side of political correctness? Gaider and his team have been stroking the politically correct liberal machine for years now.

This is the same company whose writers created an all-female race of sexually stimulating aliens that can mind-fuck humans, literally.

It sounds like they removed something because it conveyed something they didn't intend on it conveying rather than them being scared of putting rape into stories, full stop. If you think they're just trying to spin self-censorship into PC bullshit for the feminist crowd that's completely speculation.

It sounds like they removed something because it conveyed something they didn't intend on it conveying rather than them being scared of putting rape into stories, full stop. If you think they're just trying to spin self-censorship into PC bullshit for the feminist crowd that's completely speculation.

When you write a story, there are always unintended interpretations of the message you put out.

Instead of the topic of discomfort being the focal point, it should be "Does this plot point do good things for our overall story?" and "Is this working?" That should come before comfort.

I'm not the least bit a fan of the surge of PC stupidity that has been flooding gaming discussion either, but in this particular case it's difficult to have a discussion about it because we don't know what the changed event in question actually is. Lots of stuff gets left on a cutting room floor either way so that information is required to know if that's actually appropriate in this case.

I agree with you. It's more about how the problem was identified and rectified (as far as we know) than the actual modification of the story. Every published story gets cut to pieces over and over again. That's good. The issue is that the focus is on discomfort rather than lack of/improper story function.

In this specific case, the plot event was intended as being "good-creepy" and ended up being "Bad-creepy" in the eyes of the female writers on their peer review. Does that make it not work with the story? Was it removed simply for being potentially offensive?

These questions aren't answered and that's the real issue here. The entire post by Gaider is about the female perspective, but he doesn't really say anything other than "women see things differently." But the actual topic that needs to be discussed is only explained with vague language.

What the hell is "good-creepy" anyways? Isn't something being creepy at all supposed to make the consumer feel uncomfortable? For a writer, Gaider lacks a lot of clarity. Of course, Kotaku and other outlet picked the story up and DA3 gets some publicity. Mission accomplished.

I'm bothered by how some people cherry pick what issues are offensive and need removal/censorship and what don't. On the flip side, what if a woman had presented a plot point and a man said it made him uncomfortable. What about a white person? Or a minority? How about a poor or rich person? There are lots of unintended reactions from an audience.

When you write a story, there are always unintended interpretations of the message you put out.

Instead of the topic of discomfort being the focal point, it should be "Does this plot point do good things for our overall story?" and "Is this working?" That should come before comfort.

I'm sure even (especially?) the best of writers look for feedback on their work to improve it, nevermind that something like DA3 IS a group effort in regards to writing. If it were a singular person I'd be more inclined to agree, but if you're writing in a team there's the implication you're meant to work together to create something you all want (for the most part), so if a large chunk of the team thinks it's really bad and the ones that made it didn't realize and didn't feel strongly enough to include it, then it's fine to cut that off.

Plus we got ME3's ending as a result of not having peer review.

EDIT: Though there is the point that without context we really don't know either way, no. I just have to wonder if the creepy was meant to be comical or just surreal, but if they left anything of that scene in the game we'll probably figure it out come release.

"Jennifer Hepler, the BioWare writer harassed by fans for her work on Dragon Age 2 - and for comments made years earlier about wishing to skip combat sections in games - this week left the famed RPG studio to work on a book and pursue some freelance work."

Getting to choose your race is definitely a sign they are listening to fan feedback. I'm still concerned about the battle system, but I really hope they get it right this time. The waves of enemies spawning out of thin air is what really killed DA2 for me.